


ozymandias

by miserybug



Series: assorted mcyt one shots [1]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Dream Smp, Editor Wilbur ARG, Gen, Heroes to Villains, Mental Breakdown, Minecraft, Moral Ambiguity, Parallels, Sky Gods - Freeform, ayo what the fuck wilbur you good dude, please stop feeding me content wilbur i'm going to die this is too good, smp live - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:21:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26907295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miserybug/pseuds/miserybug
Summary: "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!Nothing beside remains. Round the decayOf that colossal Wreck, boundless and bareThe lone and level sands stretch far away.”Who is Wilbur Soot, and what the fuck has he let himself become?
Relationships: Clay | Dream & Wilbur Soot, Jschlatt & Wilbur Soot, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Series: assorted mcyt one shots [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1963288
Comments: 12
Kudos: 174
Collections: Dream SMP Connected Storylines





	ozymandias

And as the narrative comes undone around him, a carefully woven tapestry fraying at the edges and scorched with his own missteps, he wonders to himself: Who is he meant to be now?

Once, he thinks that he was an editor. Young, and desperate, and cruel. He thinks he was a very, very good editor. Far better than any others, those who shall not be named. And sure, maybe once he was… a little off the rails, a little power hungry, a little angry and lost and so, so, so very cold. And sure, maybe once he was… overzealous, and ended up biting off more than he could chew, but he was young, and he was ambitious. He shed the skin of the editor the second he tasted victory, running from the finality of an ending and signing off a story full of purposeful holes with glowing regards.

Once, he thinks that he was a criminal. A petty thief, a simple drug dealer, a humble man attempting to make his way up in the world by any means necessary. All a joke, really, in a world built on a narrative that didn’t quite need to make sense as long as it was funny. He learned from that, he thinks, the importance of storytelling. Weaving a tale with fabric and lies to escape the cops, chugging a potion and pretending to be somewhere he wasn’t to prank his old friends. 

(Wilbur Soot is a criminal in this world, but he also becomes an artisan. He’s already skilled at music, at writing, but here, here he learns to speak, and he learns to make people listen to him. When you edit, you speak from behind the screen, through jump cuts and code and short clips of yourself running for your fucking life. Here though… the world is your oyster as long as you’re willing to take center stage. And he is willing, he realizes with a start. More than willing to be more than the criminal, more than the editor. He sheds his criminal past with a smile on his face and a backpack on his shoulders, and he takes to the mountains.) 

Once, he thinks that he was a traveller. No real destination, just several unfortunate supernatural events under his belt, and a friend by his side. The water rises and drowns his cries, the lava rises and burns his bridges. The skies explode and throughout it all he has someone with him to keep him sane. It’s… not always the most functional, their friendship. They fight more often than not, and they end up fucking each other over more than actually helping. But it’s someone there with him, and that’s all he can ask for. 

(Wilbur Soot is a traveller in these worlds, but he’s also a survivor. He sees things he doesn’t want to see and learns things he doesn’t want to learn. His cheery attitude, his hopes for a future center stage, his dreams of becoming more than the name “Wilbur Soot” are dampened, waterlogged and scorched and blown to smithereens. He’s only human after all, and in these worlds, the Sky Gods don’t take kindly to those. Until they do. Until Wilbur finds himself being whisked away in a storm, finds himself changing and growing and cannot find his friend, trapped inside the same exact storm. He doesn’t see him again after that for a very long time.)

Once he thinks that he was a god. The world crumbled under his fingers like sand and ash, the people bent to his will like palm trees in a hurricane. It was easy, being better, being stronger, watching the people he found struggle and fight and give in to every test he put them through, as little rats, as moles, as birds, as competitors in a new and sick game show every week for his own entertainment. He loses himself for a bit, he thinks. Forgets his origins, his friends, his family. He… if he’s being honest with himself, he’s not sure he still remembers most things to this day. 

(He’s not sure who he was in these worlds. His stint as a god doesn’t last, and for a very long time, he is blindly thankful to be human again, thanking what can only be luck that he cannot remember what he was before he was human.)

Once, he thinks that he was a revolutionary. Fighting for what’s right, building a nation under the nose of an overpowered tyrant and his lackeys, selling less than legal items and drafting declarations of independence. L’manberg is more than a movement, he insists, it’s an ideal- a mindset, and a people, and a country that will not fall to some threats and some arson and some war. He puts everything he has into his country, and he expects the world in return. Wilbur Soot breathes L’manberg into existence and he holds it in his palms like it’s precious, like it’s the one good thing he’s done in his life. And maybe it is. Maybe that’s why the betrayal hurts so much, why he shuts himself away after Eret breaks his trust, after Tommy gives up everything for Wilbur’s nation. Maybe that’s why it’s the beginning of the end. 

Once, he thinks that he was a king. The king of kings, even. A ruler fit to rule, a president given the title of leader solely by birth right alone. His country, his people, his ideals. He stood for them and they stood for him (though the latter was always the most important part). And sure, his position wasn’t earned democratically, but what couldn’t a little self contained election fix! They could change that, elicit a false sense of control on his people, let them vote him in with the illusion of choice. Their safety came first, he tells himself, even as he manipulates and molds himself into the perfect politician. He built this country with his own hands, and he would die before he let an election tear it apart.

Apparently, his pride is the death of him. 

Now, Wilbur Soot is none of those things. Stripped of his power, stripped of his people, stripped of his spirit. He has nothing, and therefore, he has nothing to lose. He’s just a tired, tired man in a hole on the side of the mountain, surfacing his head up above water after nearly drowning in nostalgia. He wipes his eyes (in a metaphorical sense, of course) and blinks, staring out at the reality that’s been placed in front of him with a new form of clarity. 

The rally Schlatt’s holding is… nice. The mere thought of Manberg being nice, being better than what he once had is disgusting. It makes a burning pit begin to form in his stomach, a boiling pot of fury and jealousy and destructive rage. It’s too nice, he thinks with selfish anger, far too nice. He'd rather it all burn- blasted to shreds like L'manberg once was, rather it be in ruin than... be some sort of thriving metropolis. If Wilbur couldn't have it, then no one could. And… oh. Wilbur Soot does not feel like the hero of this story. 

…Once, he thinks that he was a good man. Through all his jokes, he’d tried- really tried, to do good. He’d fought for freedom, he’d cheered friends up, he’d attempted to see the beauty in the world. He realizes in the aftermath of the battle, on the ruined grounds of L’manberg, that there is less beauty to the world than he thought there was. The redwood trees are toppled and burnt, the people he’s met broken and battered. Not even the walls he’s built were enough to protect them, and for that he is so, so sorry. He swears, in all of his power as the general of their army, as the leader of their new nation, that he will keep them safe, no matter the cost.

Now, Wilbur Soot is coming to the realization that maybe he’s the villain. It’s a scary, dangerous thought. He’s become everything he desperately fought to defeat, the tyrant unelected, the monster that manipulates. He’s been that for a while, he realizes, remembering the start of his campaign, remembering his desperate grasp at engineering his own rise to dictatorship. He’s been so scared of being made out as the bad guy for so long that he’s fallen into a trap of his own creation and gone and done it to himself. 

Maybe it’s not an unwelcome realization. In fact… Wilbur Soot can work with this, and though his thoughts are churning at record speeds, and disgust wells in his pores and leaks from his glands at his own actions, he realizes that this was always meant to be. 

Power corrupts, and Wilbur Soot earned that fucking power fair and square. He fought for it, and no election will take that away from him. No new blood was going to get in the way of his country, stealing his land, tearing apart his people. 

And… maybe, maybe it was Orwellian, in the not so surveillance state way. Maybe he was Napoleon, power hungry and corrupt and just as bad as his predecessors. He takes the TNT from Dream’s hands and laughs a wild laugh, holes himself up in the ravine and looks, really looks at himself. With shaking hands, he perches over a puddle and realizes that he can no longer tell the difference between his own reflection and the blank white mask that guards Dream’s own face. And maybe, he thinks, his mind racing faster than it ever has before, a frantic off beat symphony accompanying his panicked and paranoid thoughts, maybe that wasn’t a bad thing either. 

He slows himself down, letting out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. A pressure lifts from his shoulder, like he’s just realized that the weight of the world doesn’t rest upon him. He stands and he walks, a farm animal finally on two legs instead of four.

Wilbur Soot wants white flags hanging from the office buildings of Manberg, and if he doesn’t get them voluntarily. Well… he’ll just burn the place to the fucking ground until they have no other choice. Until nothing beside remains.

**Author's Note:**

> please wilbur you are too kind to me. i am too happy. another character analysis bc the plot twist of today's streams was too good to NOT write about. this isn't beta read or anything, i just word vomited it out. you know me and my obsession over parallels between characters and connecting worlds. i mean. what more is there to expect from me at this point.
> 
> we’ve made a discord for mcyt writers ! there are some pretty strict rules about creator boundaries (no shipping, no perma death, no crazy gore because. yknow. theyre real people) so if you dont write stuff like that (or if you’re a reader!!), feel free to join at https://discord.gg/7XDH6NY !! we’d love to have you :D


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